China's Own Historical Revisionism

By WILLY LAM Wall Street Journal August 11, 2005

China's government bitterly accuses Japan of historical revisionism, but the new Chinese leadership should also earn high marks for creative and self-serving misinterpretation of past events. Going by a recent propaganda offensive, for instance, one would easily conclude that the Chinese Communist Party single-handedly defeated the Japanese imperialists in World War II.

The fact is, of course, that when Tokyo surrendered to the American-led Allied Powers in 1945, the CCP could hardly claim victory. It was, for one, expending at least as much effort fighting the better-equipped Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalists) forces as Japanese invaders.

It's easy to see why China's ruling communists would want to savor today a triumph that eluded their predecessors 60 years ago. The disinformation campaign requires relentless media manipulation and political mobilization, but it aims to boost the party's sagging legitimacy as well as preventing archrival Japan from emerging as a political power on the world stage.

As a true disciple of Mao Zedong, President Hu Jintao is a master at molding history to serve political ends. And though the Hu team probably understands that nationalism is a double-edged sword, the "anti-Japan card" seems indispensable at a time when Communism is dead and the social fabric is being torn asunder. Thus the marathon WWII-related ceremonies and television documentaries teaching these peculiar "lessons of history."

And relentless they have been. While inspecting WWII battlegrounds in central Shanxi Province late last month, Mr. Hu -- who has nearly four decades of experience as a Marxist theorist, commissar and spin-meister -- noted how "the great victory over the atrocious Japanese invaders" was achieved "under the flag of the anti-Japanese national united front championed by the CCP." Mr. Hu then paid tribute to the larger-than-life exploits of the Long March generation of party elders.

During the sometimes frenetic commemoration exercises of the past few weeks hardly any mention has been made of the perhaps equally heroic -- and certainly of much larger scale -- efforts made by the non-Communist elements who fought in the 1937-1945 anti-Japanese war. The state media has also only made the skimpiest reference to the fact that the Japanese war machine was crushed mainly by the U.S. Instead, Mr. Hu earlier this year chose to dwell on how Soviet soldiers had helped China defeat the hated Japanese by fighting "shoulder to shoulder" with their Chinese comrades in the northeastern provinces.

The truth is that, though the KMT leadership that ruled much of eastern and central China during this period was incorrigibly corrupt, Nationalist soldiers did most of the fighting against the Japanese intruders. The great majority of casualties sustained by Chinese soldiers were borne by KMT, not Communist divisions. Mao and other guerrilla leaders decided at the time to conserve their strength for the "larger struggle" of taking over all of China once the Japanese Imperial Army was decimated by the U.S.-led Allied Forces.

Apart from using the 60th anniversary of WWII to drum up support for the CCP, Mr. Hu and his colleagues in the Central Military Commission want to underscore the imperative of strengthening the People's Liberation Army, which earned its spurs during the twin anti-KMT and anti-Japanese campaign. As the Soviet-trained defense minister, Gen. Cao Gangchuan recently put it, "the history of WWII has shown that we'll be invaded [again] in the absence a strong national defense."

Apart from repackaging history to prolong the mandate of heaven, the CCP leadership is trying to ensure that Tokyo's less-than-thorough apologies over WWII atrocities will continue to prevent Japan from emerging as a political and diplomatic power in Asia-Pacific. The Hu team has linked Tokyo's own problematic treatment of history with Beijing's efforts to deny Japan a seat as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. Beijing's task, of course, has been rendered easier by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's obsession with visiting the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which honors some war criminals.

One dominant theme of Beijing's campaign has been to mobilize demands for compensation by surviving victims of Japanese atrocities, such as the sex slaves or "comfort women," the conscripted laborers, as well as Chinese hurt by bombs and chemical weapons left behind by the Imperial Army. Obviously, these groups have every right to press their just claims. The CCP leadership, however, has chosen to gloss over the fact that during bilateral negotiations for the establishment of Sino-Japanese diplomatic ties in the early 1970s China's leaders explicitly ruled that China had, as a gesture of goodwill, voluntarily given up the right to press the Japanese government for WWII-related damages and compensation. Partly as a result of this, Tokyo later decided to earmark hefty overseas development aid for China.

Given that, under international law, the majority of war-related compensation claims can only be made against governments, the CCP leadership's decision more than three decades ago has made the legal campaigns of different victim groups much more difficult. Moreover, neither Mr. Hu nor former president Jiang Zemin have explained why the Chinese government had until about two years ago discouraged WWII-related victims from publicizing their plight in the Chinese media, not to mention making trips to Tokyo to seek damages. Not surprisingly, the recent upsurge of "anti-Japan" cases has coincided with the dramatic downturn in bilateral relations.

Given Beijing's total control over the archives -- and near-total control of the media -- it is much easier for Chinese authorities to embellish or excise historical records than it is for Japan or other democratic countries. China will however win a lot more respect in the international community -- including among ordinary Japanese -- if the Hu leadership were willing to take advantage of global attention on WWII-related events to reveal, warts and all, the untold story of the CCP's struggle against the Japanese as well as the KMT in the 1930s and 1940s.
Certainly military geniuses such as Mao and Gen. Zhu De scored several coups against the much better-armed Japanese invaders. But how about questions raised by historians, for example, that Mao and his Red Army hid in mountain redoubts even as the Communists' bitterest foes -- the Japanese and the KMT -- were cutting down each other in ferocious battles on the plains? Only if a country -- and its leadership -- is willing to face up to the truth can it demand another country to do the same.